


en route

by stillmadaboutpetra



Series: Bite the Hand That Feeds [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Complicated Relationships, Comrades in Arms, Friendship/Love, Gen, Love, M/M, Masculinity, Mike centric, Military, Outsider Perspective, Pining, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-15
Updated: 2016-06-05
Packaged: 2018-04-30 19:57:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 19,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5177753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillmadaboutpetra/pseuds/stillmadaboutpetra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If you didn’t trust the man at your back, you’d be dead looking over your shoulder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. beneath their feet

**Author's Note:**

> this is my favorite fic ive written.

Having missed out on a standard childhood, Levi doesn’t grasp the nuance of honey.

“Be _honey,”_ Erwin stresses, words barely formed behind a stunted smile. He has the wild crazy-eyed looked about him, face pulled too tight. Man hates ‘functions’ as much as Levi. Erwin’s fucked half the court at one time or another, a confession he’s shared on the same nights that he holds Levi and asks him to spin him fantasies of rage. All the bloody things Levi would do if Erwin took him off his leash. That’s a fantasy too. Levi hates pointless work. 

“What the fuck do you mean?” Levi responds, switching from foot to foot. The black formal pants are riding his crack and his balls can’t seem to decide on a side. His face reflects these minor discomforts tenfold. He is not inviting. “Can we smoke?”

Erwin release a prayer or a curse, there’s little difference to Levi, and presses his hand firmly to the small of Levi’s back. “You are impossible. Go on the balcony.” He sounds jealous.

Levi flashes him a frame of white teeth. “Come with me. Anyone asks after you, tell them you’re gassy.”

Erwin’s lips quirk, but his eyes have slid away, pinning petty prey. “I have flies to catch.”

Levi leaves him with his riddles and asinine logic. People part before Levi; he’s the poison tip of an arrow. Erwin’s fingers twitch after feathers. This is why he brings Levi. A show of strength. The same reason Mike is there too, taking up entire doorways with his shoulders and knowing precisely who in the room is drinking and dipping and sniffing. He’s Erwin’s hound. 

“Shouldn’t you be dogging Erwin’s heels?” Levi asks Mike as he slips outside and finds Mike taking respite against the balcony ledge. The night air snaps at Levi. The vest and coat is too tight for him to bare another layer, and while it made him sweat inside, the moisture cools quickly. 

“I have a headache,” Mike says simply, turning to him, light catching his eye in a gleam beneath his fringe. Pomade never did the trick with him. “Too much perfume and oils.” 

Levi snorts. Mike and his delicate senses. Poor guy has to smell a lot of filth. Levi doesn’t get thanked enough for bathing regularly and _thoroughly_. Well, Erwin shows his gratitude with things other than words. “Prissy fucks. Don’t want anyone to smell their shit.” 

“How’d _you_ get off your leash?” Mike asks, leaning on his elbows and peering over the ledge, as if resuming his role as spectator. The sound of a woman’s giggle, a man’s laugh, _another_ woman’s giggle floats up to them. Glass breaks. Laughter, shushing. The usual spectacle. Levi doesn’t care for the show below, not when the sky’s wide above him, stars all the riches in the world, moon a fat woman’s pale tit. 

“Slipped my collar. Erwin was going on about honey or some shit; swear he’s losing it sometimes.”

“Never had much to lose to begin with,” Mike mumbles, scraping his hand through his hair, frown thoughtful. Trouble passes fast over his face, then he grins at Levi. “Honey?”

Levi huffs, and with the motion pushes what must be the last store of body heat from his vestments. He shivers once, violently, cold licking at his ears like a lover. Like that dog Erwin. “Something about flies and honey. Talks like an old wife.” 

Mike’s laughter booms beside him. Shoulders filling doorways and a hardy ha-ha for the whole ballroom. “You’re perfect for each other.”

Levi hunches his shoulder reflexively, shielding the secret born out of him regardless. He says nothing, and Mike settles calmly, amusement dwindling out. Levi blows on his hands, rubs them against the rough fabric of his coat. He’s glad Mike keeps his nosiness strictly literal. 

“No gloves?”

“Forgot them,” Levi sighs. 

He fishes a cigarette and box of matches out of the otherwise impractical pocket at his side. Small mercies. Mike grunts beside him and shuffles away. Levi holds his general antagonism back, focusing on catching the light. He’ll ask Erwin about that when he has a chance; catching the light. Erwin will like those words. Levi puffs, shallow little gulps. He hears the fire scold the paper, bully the leaves. They all run to his tongue, and he pushes it out his nose, burning and gray. He’ll take this smoke over the oily hail of darker days.

Surprisingly, Mike stays. Levi smokes facing away from him, downwind. He tucks his free hand into his armpit.

“Do you want my gloves,” Mike offers quietly. Must be really bad inside for him to stick around.

Levi swings his head and looks at him pointedly, unimpressed. Mike clenches his hand around the railing, fingers curled all the way around. He cants a smile downward, at the painted fairies kissing in the garden. 

“It’s gentlemanly to offer,” he shrugs.

Levi blows a ring through a ring at him in response. It suggests something vulgar. Mike cuts through them with a swipe of his hand. They cringe at the white shreds and pretend they didn’t. Levi’s twitch turns into another shudder. People say ghosts send chills, don’t they?

Turning towards the doors, Levi rocks up onto his toes to see through the glass windows. They make the insides swim, dappled; it’s a flood of rose light inside. He can’t find Erwin. He’s almost tempted to hunt for him.

“What did he mean – about the honey?” Levi asks, slouching against the railing. 

“You catch more flies with honey than vinegar.” He looks teasingly at Levi, who wrinkles his nose at the metaphor. “He shouldn’t ask you to play politics.”

Levi could spit tar. “I can play politics. I can’t lick ass like he can.”

They grin, indecent. Levi feels treacherous. Mike’s steady as a rock though. The real loyal dog between the two of them. 

Levi switches hands to smoke. Mike clicks his tongue and reaches out, taking Levi’s wrist in his hand, fingers closing slowly – an out – but Levi lets them lock. The leather’s actually warm. 

“You’re pathetic,” Mike says, a little fond. He urges Levi closer, a two-step shuffle. “Put your hands under my coat.”

“I’m smoking,” Levi says dryly. He isn’t sure what Mike’s about until Mike plucks the cigarette from his fingers, lip curling but motions resolute. Levi tracks the red tip curiously. Mike lifts the damp end to Levi’s lips, holds it poised. Levi catches like the light, lips closing on the end to drag in, eyes rising from the chimney end to Mike’s syrupy gaze. 

Levi weasels his hands beneath Mike’s coat and his shirt, finding hard hot flesh that flinches back at his chilling touch. “You _are_ a gentleman. Sorry I ever doubted you.”

“It’s my best kept secret,” Mike says quietly, watching him just as quietly. Levi almost chokes on his next breath. He’s careful to blow the smoke into the wind. Mike takes his cigarette away, lets it smolder as he drapes his arm on Levi’s shoulder, taps ash behind his back. Damn if the man isn’t a furnace though. Levi leans into the shield of his body, the warm enclave. Mike nudges him a step closer, till Levi boldly slides his hands, palms now refreshingly pink instead of bitter red, round the scar-pocked flesh of Mike’s waist. His nose finds a silk patch to tuck against.

“We’ll go in after this,” Mike states. He has senior rank. Levi grunts his _yes sir_. The cold at his back and Mike at his front is…preferred… to the mess inside. But they’ve got a Commander to play devils behind. Then they’ll go to their inn. And maybe Levi will slip out from the room he’s sharing with Mike to Erwin’s. Maybe he’ll sit up with tea and play vigil. Maybe Mike will come with him, and Erwin will snore the night away, send trembles through their strange-quaking hearts. 

“Levi.”

Mike bare hand presses to his cheek, searing hot. Levi jerks, dazed.

“You’re skins cold.” His palm covers Levi’s entire forehead, over his brows, thumb hiding the slope of his nose. 

“It’s cold out,” Levi puffs, shaking him off. He’s tired. Shit. It’s the food. He ate too much. He always does at these things; Erwin’s always encouraging him to get the most out of the night. 

Mike makes an agreeing sound and shifts his grip, slotting his fingers against the lines of Levi’s jaw and tipping his head back. For a moment, Levi thinks the gentleman’s game will end, but paper meets his lips. They grind the cigarette beneath their boots; first Mike, then Levi because he likes the motion of stomping out little embers. It gives a sense of finale. Call him a ritualist.  And his hands, they don’t lose their heat all night.


	2. Le temps libre

It’s hard to resist the effects of affection, even for ragged men like Erwin and Levi. The contentment of companionship, even when everything was shit, seeped into the body. And it found its out, somehow. 

They push each other, day and night. Men ripped from boyhood, who live off scraps and scraped knuckles. They shove. They pick scabs and bite scars. But they play, funnily enough. Joust and tease. Levi spits barbs and Erwin swallows them with an irritating smile or a nod of amused indifference, taunts Levi deeper. Taunts Levi to fists until they go down in a heap of dust, undignified. But few know that. Mike knows. He sees them tussle in the training yards under the moonlight. Sometimes it looks like two wolves on a kill, a bloody mess born between them, hearts strung out, beating in time – but it sounds like fucking.

Most nights, it sounds like fucking. It looks like killing. Mike watches them glint in the moonlight, a shadowy entity, limbs jumping and bodies rolling. They are the thing from under the bed. One, together, terrifying. At war. 

Always at war.

He loves watching them. He wants.  

They’re so small through the window where he sits. Between his forefinger and thumb, he crushes them, rolls them, plays God with their black bodies. His favorites. He loves.

He envies.

A bruise swells and softens the line of Levi’s jaw, a spoil of war. It makes mate with the plums kissed down his throat, the ones tucked low into his cravat. Erwin doesn’t look at them. Levi fingers them, meticulously groomed nails teasing the tender flesh. 

Sparring.

Mike can taste their reeking love in the air. It sits on the back of his tongue, every swallow bringing the heat down to his gut. The bruises soften Levi all over. Doesn’t Erwin worry about dulling his blade? But in the next expedition, Levi kills a feast. Mike catches sight of him, a blood moon over harvest. Erwin leads them home, massacre trailed guiding light.

The marks turn, ripen. Levi’s hung with cherries. He polishes the redness, strokes with the knuckles of his fingers. Like a wetstone. Till the skin burns. Then he tucks his hair behind his ears. It escapes. The gesture repeats. Mike can’t look away, Erwin can’t bear to look. Levi slips his gaze out the window, lost to them all. It’s becoming a problem. 

It hides in Mike’s consciousness. Problems outside of the biggest problem of them all. He slips, dazed, from hour to hour through the week. It’s been a long time since he was distracted. Remembering how to live, to move, outside of the time between expeditions, it’s a practice of motion. He repeats himself, habits, drills, until he finds himself again in the thin slivers of a personal life left to him. 

It’s been a long time since Erwin’s held happiness. It estranges. Mike smiles with him, moved. Even as the nights grow colder, he feels lighter. Their happiness is precious. They’re on thin ice.


	3. Remains

Shouts in the night at the barracks of the Survey Corp are too common to rouse people from bed. Exceptions hold. 

The shout, curse, crash collision from Erwin’s room in the dead of night, the abortive cry, a grunt of pain, it lures Mike from his bed after a moment of indecision. Aches fall down his spine the moment his feet meet the cold floor. He opens his door in time to see Levi slam out of Erwin’s, half-dressed, disheveled. Mike needs no excuse to smooth his hair, to catch him tight. Levi storms passed, scratching at his skin like a man possessed, shaking a demon from his back. The gesture Mike only made in his mind goes ignored.

Erwin sighs from the doorway of his room. It’s too dark to see many details, but Mike can see the nakedness of his legs – and the dark splatter of blood on his face. Erwin’s unhurried, resting against the doorframe, holding himself back from pursuit that’s so-long built into his bones. 

Levi’s a creature of flight. Let him go.

“Rough night?” Mike ventures, baiting. 

Erwin grunts, pushes from the doorframe. He touches his face, fingering the blood. “Yeah.” The wall torch, lowburned embers, sets his eyes a rusted patina. “Want a drink?”

You don’t turn down that sort of cry for help. Mike slips across the hall and follows Erwin into his room, closing the door with a snick. Erwin doesn’t expect Levi back, but Mike itches to leave the door cracked regardless. Would he knock? No, he’s gone, wherever he wants to go.

“Could you start a light?” Erwin throws over his shoulder, words dampened. He steps into pants, covers his naked ass. Mike does, the lamp by the bedside. He turns the wick low. The glass is cleaner than normal. He can feel the attention paid in this room, from its new neatness to the distress of the bedcovers.

“Shit,” Mike says when Erwin turns, illuminated. “Levi got you good, huh?”

It’s unclear if Erwin’s nose is the thing bleeding or his mouth, but it looks like someone smashed pulped cherries into his face. The fool smiles. His gums are caked with blood.

“Boney elbows.” He shakes his head, lifts fingers to his mouth – ah, busted top lip, and flinches. “Fuck,” he curses quietly. 

Mike pushes Erwin down onto the bed and makes use of a wash clotch and water basin set ready. Water’s cold but high at the lip of the bowl, towel dry. They didn’t make love. He brings it over and kneels in front of Erwin, squinting through the light and his bangs.

“I can do it, Mike,” Erwin protests, but Mike takes him by the chin and does it himself. He imagines licking the blood. The Titans are rubbing off on him. 

“You know I always wanted to be a field medic,” Mike shrugs, distracted, tongue poking at his top lip as he dabs away the blood. Erwin’s got a nasty gash, the lip raw and already swollen. It might even scar the skin above. “This is gonna heal like a bitch.”

“Of course,” Erwin huffs. There isn’t a bit of anger to him. 

“I’m gonna put in a few stitches so you don’t get any uglier.” He turns up the lamp. Erwin’s got a full kit. He seams Erwin’s lips together. He wants to know how the scar will feel to kiss. Will he get to know that? It’s been a long time since he’s rolled with Erwin. He might even kiss differently. 

“Still want a drink,” Erwin asks after, tonguing the fat wound. Mike dabs it with salve and declares him fit for duty. 

“Now I _know_ you’re after trouble.” 

Erwin smiles but his mouth twists into a grimace when the skin pulls. He rubs the salved patch beneath his nose. “He’s not good at sleeping.”

“I’d be scared shitless of him if he could sleep,” Mike shrugs, trying not to hang onto the words. But if Levi could sleep soundly, if he didn’t look half-beaten every goddamn day, Mike would truly believe him for the demon that hunts out in the field. 

“Right?” Erwin chuckles, flopping back onto his bed. He pats beside him. Mike mimics, laying on his back, listening to the ropes creak with their weight. They’ll need tightened again. The hay smells fresh, crinkling loudly, but it’s beaten down too. Few things aren’t.

“Bony, hmm?” Mike prompts, eyes shut.

He remembers Levi’s skull in his hands, forcing him down into sewage in that pit of a town as forgotten as the world Before-Titans. The first time they’d spared, Levi almost broke Mike’s elbow. In return, Mike punched his gut so hard that Levi vomited. When nothing came up but bile, it was only then that Mike saw how shitty Levi looked. The only thing he’d been doing was feeding grief.  Mike kicked him when he was down and hauled him off the grounds. No one asked for a report. Did Levi tell Erwin that Mike strong-armed him into eating? Skinny rat. Everyone goes through it.

After a long silence, so long Mike thought they’d both been asleep, Erwin answers: “Just his bones.”

Mike snorts. “You’re an ass.”

Erwin rolls towards him, props himself up. “I’m sorry we woke you. You can go back to bed.”

“That a dismissal?” Mike cracks an eye open. Erwin shakes his head slowly. Mike closes his eyes again.  “What about him?”

“You curious or concerned,” Erwin asks, sitting up and shoving Mike into place longways. Guess he is staying the night. Feels like a long time ago. 

“Little of both,” Mike answers honestly. He can feel  Erwin thinking beside him. Erwin doesn’t do anything without cause, and asking Mike to say is an action, a confession. There’s more too come. 

“I don’t know,” Erwin breathes. “I don’t know where he goes when he doesn’t want to be found.” He skims his hand down Mike’s arm, callouses dragging against hair. He squeezes Mike’s fingers. “I wanted to hold him,” he whispers. “I…do you ever forget?”

Erwin’s fingers twitch where they clasp. 

“How to hold someone?” Mike guesses. It’s a nightmare thought.

“All of it.” Erwin connects his forehead to Mike’s shoulder, curling. Mike’s always been bigger than him. There aren’t many who remember Erwin ten years ago.  Apparently, Erwin doesn’t either. 

It’s nothing for Mike to turn his head to the side and brush his lips against Erwin’s hair, lightly, then with intention. 

“I’ll show you,” Mike says quietly. Erwin nods, nose sliding along Mike’s skin; he sniffs, rolls over with a creak. Mike slots close at his back, embracing Erwin tightly, wrapping his arm around his waist, sliding his arm beneath the pillow and cushioning Erwin to him. With a seizing breath, Erwin shrinks, if one can imagine such a thing, and grasps at Mike’s hand. 

“It’s not hard. See?” Mike whispers urgently, pressing kisses to Erwin’s shoulder, the back of his neck, the grown-out down of his undercut. Each one opens an old wound. “Just like old times.”

He clutches his fist to Erwin’s chest, foreign-familiar heart saluting him, a legion of life behind bones. How long would they need to listen to each other’s beating blood to count off the friends they’d lost – the whole history of their dead? One for each, military rations.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t.”

“I abandoned you.” Erwin tries to twist, to turn to face him. Mike pins him still, down, stuck at his side. If only he’d done that before. What is with him and loving these thrashing sort of men?

“No,” Mike growls, stern as he’s ever been, hush scold in Erwin’s ear. “You didn’t abandon anyone.” At Erwin’s silence, Mike rests his forehead to the back of Erwin’s skull. “I never felt that way.”

It’s later, when he’s falling asleep with Erwin still in his arms, that he feels his muscles relax. He’s been squeezing the life out of Erwin. Maybe it’s he who’s forgotten how.

* * *

Those who see Levi kiss Erwin on his broken lip, hold his face between gentled hands, swear the captain looked incapable of hurting even a fly.


	4. Rolling in it

Out on the field, Erwin doesn’t turn his head to Levi’s racing form. Levi is ordered out, and his survival is fact. Mike observes this even as a member of his own squad goes down. Erwin grits his teeth against Shadis’ direction. Not once does he ask for Levi’s safe return, nor does he look for him after, days after, when they finally make it into the relative safety of the wall. Levi dying was never part of his equation. He expects Levi to live on.

Mike? Not so much. Not if Mike judges the way Erwin clasps his shoulder and smiles at him, asks after him, asks him out for drinks. He wants to celebrate. A low body count and they actually met the mission goal, recovering the abandoned shipment of salt. It was a resource for the greater good. They even got a cut of it. The world struggles on. Erwin’s in a good mood, and when a man like that smiles, all follow suit.

Mike knuckles his dimples, teases him, soaks the night up like a raggedy cloth

Levi is in and out of the crowd, cracking jokes low in his comrades ears – low cause he can’t get any higher. Mike says as much to Erwin who bellows, sloshed. Mike grins at him over the heads of a few friends. Levi licks beer off his thumb and salutes Mike with a cock of his head, a raised glass. Mike holds his gaze, too eager too look away, until Levi frowns in confusion.

What? he mouths.

Mike shakes his head. It really is nothing.

Hanji buys the cadets shots. Two of them took down their first Titans. Assists but still. No one begrudges an excuse for cheer. They’re rowdy. They spill drinks on the floor and swear its for the dead that came before them. Levi and Erwin weld together. Levi looks half-asleep despite the noise around him, tucked under Erwin’s arm. Small but hardly delicate, the sight of him in such a state, droopy eyed and stifling yawns behind his hand, has Mike starving.

Levi yawns in his face at one point, showing off a few missing teeth, and elbows out from underneath Erwin’s hold. “M’goin,” he declares. That’s that. Erwin drops a secret into Levi’s ear, eyes darting around. Levi smiles, shrugs, glances at Mike. Then he’s gone. If Levi hadn’t wanted to be caught that day, they never would have got him.

Mike clenches his hand around nothing, black silk long gone. Someone asks him if hes alright. 

It’s too goddamn easy to kiss Erwin on the way to the barracks. Erwin even giggles, pushed up against someone’s house, Mikes fingers tracing the outline of his dick.

“Well this is unexpected,” he sighs, head lolled back against the wall, eyes shut.

Mike kisses his neck. “Is it?” He’s offended; does he telegraph himself that much?

“I didn’t think I’d let this happen again,” Erwin says, and Mike can tell he didn’t really mean to say it. He leaves Erwin cold, pushes off and storms ahead.

“Mike,” Erwin calls, but he can’t order Mike around, not like he wants to just by calling his name like he’s a disobedient dog. A runaway. Some kind of grave-sniffer. He makes the mistake of trying to pull Mike to a halt.

They scuffle in the street, boots sliding on gravel and dried horseshit till they trip over a pothole, knock into a stone wall. Erwin pins him, body slurring against Mike, going soft as they make full bodied contact.

“Listen to me,” Erwin demands, laving kisses to Mike’s cheek, chin, missing his mouth by sloppy miles. Something about Mike’s mouth makes Erwin shy. Mike wishes he could feel the snagged scar on Erwin’s lip.

“I don’t have to,” Mike grunts, tripping his foot behind Erwin’s, snapping Erwin’s weight out from under him. Erwin pulls Mike down with him, the raggedy bastard. Of all places to land, its in a puddle of shit and piss. They scurry away like roaches at a flash, rubbing it off their faces and cursing everyone down to their mothers. They bite their tongues.

“You drunk buffoons,” a few corpsmen laugh, coming up round them and japing in a circle. “Lookit yous, sloshed and covered in shit.”

They draw freezing water up from the well, stripped naked under the moon, shrinking in the cold. It’s hardly how Mike envisioned the night ending. Ha! Naked with Erwin all the same.

“I’m sorry,” Erwin says, sounding sober even though he’s only exchanged dumb-tongue for chattering teeth.

“You’ve done an awful lot of apologizing to me lately. Going through a dry spell?”

“Mike.” Erwin actually sounds wounded. Victory lances through Mike, surprising him. One night he’s kissing Erwin better, burrowing into all the things they once were, and now he’s dragging it through shit, Erwin through shit. It makes parts of him feel better he didn’t’ know needed any tending.

Doubt.

Mike licks his lips, tastes something sour still clinging to the cracks. He’ll bathe again in the morning. To be fair, this slop isn’t half as rotten smelling as Titan guts. It’s almost comforting. Animal, natural.

“Hey!”

Both of them startle. Mike turns, bumping into Erwin — didn’t know he was at his back like that. What almost-touch did he almost-feel on his naked skin?

Levi has a bundle of blankets in his arms. “The fuck did you two do? Hanji came in howling their head off.”

Erwin makes for the blanket right away, but Levi dances away from him, snickering. “No, shithead, are you even clean yet?”

“Y-yes,” Erwin chatters. He wraps his arms around himself, pathetic. The emotion that’d risen up just moments ago is gone.

“Nope. I see shit on you still.” Levi stays out of reach, skipping over to Mike with a critical eye. “What about you, get behind your ears? Under your fingernails?”

Levi’s eyes leave burns where they sweep and scrape over him, narrowed, specks of moon white ash beneath of velvet blur of lashes. Mike inhales deeply, straightening to tower over Levi, stepping close. He thinks he sees Erwin drop his shoulders, on guard.

“You tell me,” Mike challenges; he holds out his hands.

“Good enough,” Levi says, not looking away from Mike’s face. He tosses a blanket at Mike and turns on his heel to throw one at Erwin as well. “Don’t touch me until you’ve had a proper bath.”

Before Erwin can reach out and do just that - no one likes to taunt death like Erwin Smith - Mike speaks up.

“What about me?”

Levi whips his head around, mouth slightly agape. Mike refrains from smiling. Finally, Levi sniffs. “I don’t make exceptions.”

He walks off, leaving them shivering in their blankets like a couple of pack horses.

Mike grabs his boots. Erwin’s standing there with his thinking face on. Levi’s right: he does look constipated.

“Where are you going?” Erwin asks when Mike starts to take his leave.

“To take a proper bath.”

Either Erwin’s truly temping his fate or he’s given up on Levi’s attention for the night because Mike doesn’t find him at the baths. He scrubs down, doesn’t bother to heat the water, shivering and skin sore from cold and the rough bristles of a brush. Boar bristles nick a hangnail. Mike pinches the skin off with his teeth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mm.mohmygod ao3 being a fuckup posting this section in 2parts


	5. And sundry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Following the tiff with Erwin

Levi admits him with a put-upon “what” that Mike takes as invitation to slip inside. If Levi was expecting Erwin he doesn’t show any surprise at Mike’s appearance. Just holds his hand aloft, needle a silver glint between two nimble fingers, dark thread disappearing into the cloak draped over the table.

“What,” Levi repeats, dropping his attention back to his stitches. He would have done a fine job on Erwin’s lip: the master’s tools on the master’s house.

“I took a bath,” Mike declares, stepping forward and drawing one of the chairs from the table. It creaks when he settles his unwanted weight.

“Congratulations.“ 

The needle darts up from the back of the cloth. Levi pinches the tip, draws it out, arm extending in a neat line above his head. he hunches closer, squints, stabs the needle through again. The torn seam of the hood to the neck of the cloak nips together slowly, rough fabric scarred in a pucker of stitches. Levi seems a creature of infinite, making and unmaking necks. His hands annihilation and regeneration.

“Is that yours?” Mike asks after some time.

“Hanji’s.“ 

Mike glances at the rumpled bed above Levi’s bunk. Levi argued that if he slept in the same room as Hanji, he could guarantee some level of civility and cleanliness. Their uncanny friendship was an inspiration to all and sundry. United by the bonds of comraderie and service to mankind, yatta, yatta.

The needle point stabs Levi’s thumb, right in the center of the pad. Blood buds like a berry, a summertime treat that Levi licks away. 

Dropping his stitching, Levi leans back in his chair, foot snagging the rung beneath Mike’s and resting there. 

“Giving up?” Mike questions, lowering a hand to Levi’s ankle. He half suspects the bones to snap at him. Levi twitches when Mike closes his hands around his ankle. It feels like Erwin said it would. 

Levi pulls his leg faintly, and when Mike releases him instantly, he clicks his tongue and shoves his foot back between Mike’s thighs, antagonistic. Mike cradles the delicate arch in his palm, stroking the crippling buttress of a tendon.

“M'knuckles are stiff.” Levi bends his fingers and they rattle of shallow cracks. He drops them to his lap and stuffs them between his thighs. “I hate the cold.”

Mike hums. He’s not as affected. It’s a well known fact. Levi scoffs.

“You’d be as good as a dog in bed.”

It pulls a smile to Mike’s lips. he slips his fingers under the cuff of Levi’s trousers, scoots the weak walls of his sock down. The skin in chilled, hair coarse beneath the hot circling of his thumb. A vein stirs beneath the skin, stretched over the bridge of the talus.

“I am.” He nods, sliding his palm against Levi’s shin. Levi’s toes wiggle against the cap of the sock. Playful little things. “Better than a dog, some say.”

“What could possibly be better than some hairy dog warming my bed?”

Using both hands, Mike tugs; it brings Levi and his chair scraping on the wooden floor. The hard arched shape of Levi’s foot, the easy slope of his sole, sets Mike’s mind adrift.

“A man.” He licks his lips, eyes falling from Levi’s face, those delicately carved features and daring eyes, to Levi’s foot. He watches, heart thumping blood low to his crotch, as Levi flexes his toes and prods forward, pressing the ball of his foot to the risen line of Mike’s cock in his pants.

“A man, huh,” Levi muses, rubbing his foot side-to-side, stiffening his leg against the encouraging nudge of Mike’s hips.

It’s a tease that makes Mike’s spine curl, bones wanting to swell with the agitation of arousal that twitches deep, making even his anus clench as the feeling roots behind his balls.

“Men are just mutts,” Levi sneers, crushing his foot against Mike’s cock, grinding his bones beneath the head, cracking a delirious moan from Mike, pain rotted pleasure. 

His nails leave red waves on Levi’s ankle. Little bitch. Mike laughs, letting Levi take his foot back and stomp it against the ground as if ridding mud from his boot. 

“My hands are still cold; you should have put your dick there,” Levi tsks, curling up in his chair and taking up his needle once more. Have they ever thrown him into surgery? No, he’d hate the blood. Maybe it’d motivate him to close skin faster.

“I could–”

“Away, Mike,” Levi snaps. “You still smell like the bottom of a bottle and you can take your puppy-whining to Erwin.” He bites off the thread and grumbles to himself: “The both of you, sniffing after ass all the time.”

It’s not yet winter. Another blanket will do for insulation. Hanji will be back to snore soon anyway.

~  
It’s one thing to have a roll in the hay, up in the loft or even in the tack room. Fucked against a fence? Sure! But Mike can’t bring himself to a lonely wank among the horses and his luckier comrades; it’d be bad for group morale.

By some grace, Milo appears dead drunk in bed, a snoring hunkered form on the top bunk. Mike crawls into bed, recent events swimming dizzily in his mind.

“Milo! Hey!” he whispers. Nothing. it’s not as though they haven’t masturbated with the other in the room, but its common courtesy to make an effort otherwise. Mike can’t imagine going back to having multiple roommates.

Sagging wearily into his mattress, Mike stuffs his hand down his pants without further ado. He still aches from the pressure of Levi’s foot. He imagines a bruise and strokes the sore skin tenderly, breath hitching. 

It could be worse. Eyes closed, Mike sees it so. Levi could have stood on it, pressed his foot onto the fleshy head, squashed him leaking into the floorboards. Would the pain have thundered its way up Mike’s spine the way titan footsteps roar through the hooves of a horse?

Or, if they had sat and played, the dry fabric of Mike’s pants might have burned him, scratching over pulsing flesh, polishing him smooth down to new skin. Shiny as a blade, as a boot buckle.

Levi would be shameless, guiltless. He’d taunt, wouldn’t he? Mike just some mutt slobbering from his mouth and his dick for a piece of him. 

Mike rubs himself slowly, tightly, teeth clenched and hips pushing up in stiff waves, fucking nothing, fucking Levi’s insolent face. 

Kiss it better. What a mean little thing. Wet lips and an eager tongue – he’d crawl, get down on his knees beneath the table and suck Mike into his mouth. Suck bruises, come, the piss Mike hadn’t pissed. He’d be good at it.

It’s a blurry fantasy, one made up in fractured memories, bodies phantom heats and ghost hands, all Mike’s clenched fist. 

Levi’s foot, the bones of his toes rubbing his cock. Levi had rubbed his cock and looked him in the eye. Mike stifled a groan. He should have ripped Levi’s sock off and fucked the arch of his foot. Maybe if he’d pressed, gotten down like a dog, Levi would have given him that small bit of himself. Mostly bones. He can spare it.

Can he? Has Levi given too much to Erwin? 

The two of them could gnaw him down to the marrow and then some. Start at the feet and work their way up.

The slit of his cock weeps into his palm. He’s not even stroking, just squeezing at himself, strangling something dead. It hurts. He pretends it’s Levi. He’s not sure where the fantasy begins and ends.

With a huff, he rolls over onto his stomach, pushing his pants down so his cock hangs out for him to Fuck against the bed. The coarse sheets burn good, like he’s fucking someone too dry and tight. But with time, he smelts out a ravine, sliding his cock through a wet slope – split Levi wide, wetted him. With his mouth, Mike would take him with his mouth, fuck his dry tight hole with his tongue. 

A creak above reminds Mike to shut the fuck up cause he’s been groaning like an ox, humping fist and bed like a hot-faced boy. With a full-body shudder, he curls, cupping his hands around himself, stickiness clinging to his fingers.

He’d make it good, he tells himself. For Levi. He’d kiss up the dark meat of his thighs, the soft skin on the underside of his arms. He’d do it anyway Levi wanted and kiss him stupid too. Tuck Levi close. Tuck Levi inside, fit him whole and living into his mouth, bones and all.


	6. Communion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> graphic depictions of menstruation/sex while menstruating

While not formally stated anywhere aside from personal logs, the Survey corp does not attempt excursions when half of its soldiers are menstruating. Even drills become optional.  By the insidious grace of nature, all but few outliers menstruate at the same time. Many don’t at all. It’s a benefit to them. Mike remembers a captain who died from an abortive procedure. She’d bled buckets.

The barracks smell of turned earth.

It’s funny watching the newest cadets face their first mass menstruation. The white pants disappear. Everyone wears blacks. It’s a performance of mourning that none of them feel. But unlike the returns, when the wood of the carts warps under the steeping of blood and bodies come back like bouquet, gore up to the gills, and ash fills the air, fat burning bubble-slick on the back of the tongue – Mike breathes deep in the days of communal blood.

Some folks avoid the barrack, go off base, fuck second-other-outside lovers. There are bouts of rage. The Bleeders brawl on the field and fingerfuck themselves through cramps. 

Levi harps Hanji about the blood caked under their nails and growing flowers in the bed of their thumb. The two of them have concocted a formidable soothing tea. Levi’s a godsend. Keeps a pot hot in his room at all times, the door cracked. He cleans. Makes sure there are clean rags. He’s fastidious. Once chewed out a new cadet for not changing her sanitary rags as often as he sees fit. Washed them for her. 

Levi looks at women like they’re gutting him. He’s been caught brushing and braiding hair. Beat a corpsman bloody for not paying his whore what he owed. No one asks; they all guess. Continuing chronicles of the man myth legend. His tenderness becomes a force of nature. Hanji calls him Mother Hen. He clucks, feathers ruffled. It’s charming. Mike smells him smoking on the rooftop; the second scrabble of Erwin’s boots when he joins Levi under the moon. Levi drags up a harlot’s tune that Erwin gobbles and spits out in a canon by the second bridge. Mike tries not to howl along from below.

Without the press of drills and demands, Erwin emerges late from his room every day of the week, inkstains gathering in the dry callouses of his knuckles. He and Shadis make sure there are enough supplies for everyone but otherwise, those two don’t spend much time in the commons. Mike does see the dark kisses Erwin’s left on Levi’s stomach, mouthing at organs and futures that will never exist inside his body.

“He’s moodier than The Bleeders,” Levi confers to Mike before engaging in springing, light combat. Mike dogged his heels all morning, itching to shake himself out. All the bloods’ getting to his head. “Pretty sure he wishes everyone was having babies instead.”

Mike catches Levi’s kick, holds onto hard leather sole of his boot too long. “I’d like to see him with that many babies.”

“The shit dreams are made of,” Levi grunts, lifting his foot from Mike’s hands with a pointed look.

* * *

Cornelia Mulder, whom Mike prefers to simply call Missy, is a grave comfort. She’s got a body like a fallout shelter. This week, she’s so dark and damp Mike imagines plunging his fingers into topsoil. Parts of her fall out around him like worms in the rain. 

“Michael,” she demands his full history with two-syllables. “Stop rooting like a pig at me.” 

He’s a slop between her legs. She closes her thighs around him, makes him spread her, fingers punching through flesh like sunbeams and clouds. The dark room blankets them. It’s all feeling, sweat and groaning a comfort, a drop or two of moonlight silking the shadows. Erwin and Levi are scrabbling over the roof, smoking and singing. Mike howls into the cavern of a woman’s womb. He sucks at her clit, lips molded around her lips, the bone of her pubis a wall he could bite through. 

Missy’s a gush around his cock. He slips out and fucks her firm fat belly. It’s almost as good as her pussy, tip snagging on her deep belly button. She won’t have it too long. Takes him into her hand, eats him back up into her womb. He doesn’t fuck into people too often, doesn’t want to hurt them. He’s rigid, grinding her like a millstone. Remembers a tincture made with bonemeal. Missy pats his sticky face with her sticky fingers, pushes his head down to suck the shivering rings of her nipples, his hands massaging the babyless ache from them.

Mike throws the light on when he’s done. He’s stopped gasping at the result. He, she, the bed, black and flamed with blood. His cock, lingering stiffness, juts like a puncture bone from his pelvis, wrapped in something still-beating, something never-born. Missy regards him with dazed terror. She always does. There’s a flinch stirring in her heart. Mike with her painted on his face, coated in the expulsions of nature. They’ve seen worse. He’s fucked the space between her legs into a red pit. He might have well run her through with his blades. 

The skin around his mouth is clean with how many times he’s licked his lips.  He falls back into her, fast, hard, till her nails till his back. They raise an ode to bloodstains. They don’t bother with new towels, new bedding, not for these nights. It’s the same sheet each time. They’ve written half a year of survival into it. 

Mike rarely makes promises. “When Erwin’s Commander, I’m going to hang it from the flagpole.”

Everything with wings has to touch the earth sometime. 

You don’t fucking hold grudges. In the morning, Erwin licks his thumb and wiggles the wet pad into the curled frame of Mike’s ear. “You and Missy don’t clean up well enough,” he chides, showing Mike the stain. 

“When did you get standards?” Mike sniffs, licking his forefinger and scraping away what feels like a scab in his ear. It’s a clot of dried blood that flakes down onto his white shirt. It’s an ash stain. 

Erwin hums, turning away. His whites have never been whiter. 


	7. Dead Men Tell No Secrets

All twelve commanders of the Survey Corp keep personal logs. A few learned soldiers keep journals. Mike isn’t sure any of their writing has seen the light of day. They're as rumored as love affairs. Who would want to record the macabre. Everything slips off like forgotten sentences. Here today gone tomorrow. Or returned with stumps for limbs and blood loss a drug in the brain. They’re tomes of terror. 

Erwin writes. He can write with both hands. He writes captain's orders and keeps records, takes minutes at meetings. And he pens something unintelligible, whispers arcane and deviant in a leather book that has initials that aren’t his stamped into the meat of the spine. There’s no point pursuing the secrets he keeps. 

Levi’s name is an X, two cuts of ink. 

In bed, very early and very late, he will trace X X X over Erwin’s chest, a mortician’s crooked incision. He’ll say it too, “eeks eeks eeks.” There’s a burial in that name. Eeks. Eeks. His blood pounds with it, two cuts, ink running black. 

Levi crosses his blades before him, cardinal points lopsided, tip to fist and marionette strings. He doesn’t die. Eeks eeks. He cuts. 

The thing about rumor-remembered lives is that they change. Levi signs away to the dead and dying. Oral tradition lives and breaths until they stop. Eeks. Eeks. Something buried there.

They watch the Titan nearly-die.

Levi shifts, restless, arms down at his sides and blades hanging lower. Hanji has a whole team sketching in a circle around the Titan. Its behemoth chest doesn’t even quake as soldiers dutifully cut away its limbs over and over, hacking away like a harvest. The spectacle ends for Mike, sent out with his team to maintain the perimeter. 

Hanji insisted on more anatomical understanding of Titan's, their regenerative abilities. Does their regeneration slow? Does it occur at equal rates across the body? They lead an impressive argument in Shadis’s office - public opinion stands that Erwin’s the only reason they’re standing around a Titan like butchers. Some of the soldiers don’t mind. It’s cathartic to cut it to pieces again and again. They mumble names under their breath like this is the only vengeance they’ll get. (None are as greedy as Levi.) But the longer they flock, the more tension creeps. Mike leads two long-range squads on his end of the perimeter. It’s not the whole Corp, not for a “scientific excursion.” 

It occurs to him that Hanji is the one breathing life into this whole goddamn mess. They’ve born an archive of controversial but essential works on Titans the world before has never desired. Wild, erratic, each page is copied over by the Corp’s official scribe. Hanji has a team of inspired artists and observant eyes watching and recording that Titan nearly-die. To be put in a book.

They will talk later of how Erwin stared into the Titan’s eyes. They will talk more of how Levi deferred to Erwin above all else. That’s all Mike has. Talk.

The rumor of Shadis’s imminent retirement makes its weaseling way to Mike’s ear in the mess hall.Cadets. Of course it’s cadets. Milo catches Mike’s eye, cocks his head accordingly. 

“It’s cause of Levi,” he says quietly. His spoon only finds two raisins in his oatmeal. “He won’t give Shadis the time of day.”

Mike doesn’t correct him. This is Erwin’s doing. He knows well enough to know that. 

What would it be like to have Levi’s deference? It’s a bold thought, but a wrong one. It’s not that simple. What would it be like to give Levi inspiration? Erwin knows. They’ve become each other’s twin muses, opposite ends of some fantastic beast. And here Mike thought Erwin had eyes only for Titans. they’re shut now.

Erwin’s asleep at his seat, draped over the desk. His head is cradled in the fold of his arms, face turned towards where Levi sits. Levi’s balanced on the edge of Erwin’s desk, lounging, twisted, spine turned like a tree that grew up around an obstacle no longer there. Beneath the talons of the hand that supports his weight is the flat-opened face of Erwin’s journal, bared naked, alien scrawl unreadable. But Levi’s attention is bowed over Erwin. An empty hand strokes the back of Erwin’s head, so lightly he barely disturbs the falling hair. 

“Eeks,” Levi whispers, fingers building fallen crosses over the nape of Erwin’s neck. He doesn’t leave a mark on Erwin. One scarred palm is enough. 

Mike didn’t come to Erwin’s office with the intention to spy. The ajar door beckoned his eyes and ears, and now his hand to push it open. It isn’t like either of them to leave it open; he guesses someone else had been in and out, careless, and Erwin’s vulnerability was too pleasant for Levi to give up for the sake of certain privacy. He snaps to attention now, trunk of his body righting itself. His index finger is still poised, but all of him becomes a claw and a dare. 

Mike’s unruffled. He steps forward lightly to lay his report on the table. Erwin’s chest rises and falls steadily. Mike wouldn’t dare disturb him. Won’t question the guilt and shame caught on Levi’s face to be found out whispering the closest thing to sweetness he might know. But Mike can’t help the lingering glance to erwin’s face, the look of longing, the scrutiny of a brow towards the journal pinned under Levi’s hand. 

Levi marks the path of Mike’s eyes. He lifts the book to his face, nose nudging between the pages, deep to the spine. He inhales, eyes lidded like he’s smelling the cunt of a woman. “I can’t even read,” he whispers conspiratorially.

Mike snickers, throaty and halted, teeth flashing. Erwin sighs out of his mouth. The journal closes silently, laid neatly to the side. 

“He’ll be up soon,” Levi continues, voice a little firmer. His hand clenches when he looks at Erwin, like he’s stopping himself from reaching out to trace the swirl of Erwin’s ear. Mike understands. “Go get some tea.”

He doesn’t knock, balancing the tray carefully, wedging the door open with his shoulder. It’s noisy. Mike winces. “I hope he’s awake.”

Erwin is awake in more ways than one. He doesn’t drop his hand immediately from Levi but instead slides it down from Levi’s neck, down his back and over the square flare of his hips. Lingering, loving. Reluctant to let go of the man.

“If it was anyone but Mike,” he grumbles at Levi, having to swallow before facing Mike. Even still, his face is god-struck, mouth slick and red and eyes slow to focus. It’s familiar and eerie. Mike wants to meet his mouth, kiss him too. He wishes he’d come later, let Levi do more to Erwin. He could -- They could --

Levi, a knee on the edge of Erwin’s chair and body curled over him, snatches Erwin by the chin, turns his face and presses another kiss to his lips. Mike kicks the door shut before anyone else sees, cups rattling. Erwin makes a noise of protest, a wine-coloured gasp into Levi’s mouth.

“But it is Mike,” Levi snarks, standing finally and pushing his hair from his face. By force of will, he pinches away his blush, sniffs derisively. Erwin fixes him with a chastising look that goes unheeded. “You two have done worse.”

“We all have,” Mike adds, advancing and setting the tray down. 

Erwin looks between them suspiciously. “Regardless, it’s inappropriate. I apologize, Mike.” He looks worried, like Mike will be mad. Sore. He doesn’t want to hurt Mike. But they’ve all got mean streaks. Levi hasn’t said anything to Erwin about what Mike has been sniffing after. “...and I haven’t had a chance to look at your report.” 

“It’s fine,” Levi interjects. “We’ll drink tea while you read.” He takes the pot up, hands steady as he pours a thin dark steam into three cups. Levi joins Mike opposite of Erwin; he hooks his foot onto the rung of Mike’s chair.


	8. Bone white

Winter sets in properly, bone white all over. Sun, sky, snow; red on noses and knuckles. Knees ache. Even Mike rolls over stiff in bed. He arches, shoulders cracking down between themselves like wheat under a stone. 

“Oh, good, you’re up,” Milo chatters from the top bunk. It might as well be night with how much the morning wants to show itself. “What do you think about handing me up my clothes and such?”

Mike stretches more, sinking deeper into the small pit of warmth bundled under his blankets. “Too good to set your pretty feet on the ground like the rest of us?” he guesses sleepily. He can think of prettier feet deserving that kind of tender treatment. 

“If I can avoid it.” Mike can hear Milo batting his lashes. So Mike does, eventually, throw Milo’s clothes up to him and about nails him in the head with his boots. It’s worth it to watch the man almost fall off the bed trying to get into his pants, thrashing like a cadet desperate for his first fuck. It’s not funny enough to stop Mike from noticing the tense muscle of Erwin’s brow that wants to burst. 

Mike leans over when Erwin‘s got a mouthful of particularly runny oatmeal to whisper “frostbite got your dick?” Erwin swallows rather than spits and Mike considers it a failure. 

“My legs would have to go first,” Erwin bites. Mike wants to slip his hand between them to knead the thick muscle, appreciate that that is not the case. He doesn’t’ get the chance to think on it further. Erwin considers the syrup-stained gruel on his spoon that drips freely. “I was reviewing papers. We lose too many supporters in the winter.”

Hanji’s head snaps up from the notebook they’d been working through -- forced to decipher their own handwriting once the fit of genius insanity that made them scrawl out pages in an induced state wears off and they’re left with chicken scratch -- “It’s too consistent for you to worry about. Don’t.” 

Mike and Milo pause, exchange looks of mutual avoidance. If Hanji’s short, Erwin’s gonna be shorter. Those two tend to tick off each other like synced up clocks working counterways.

“I’d like to stop the annual hemorrhage of donations,” he asserts, brows pulled down. “Repetition should not induce apathy or the Survey Corp itself would be a very weak argument.”

Hanji snorts, shoulders jumping, and picks their head back up, glasses glinting in the light of the candles that burn in rows through the mess. “It is a weak argument. The latter proves the former. Just hunker down for now and pray the spring isn’t a mud hole that breaks all the horses’ ankles the first expedition.”

They snap their journal closed and stride off, spoon rolling around in their bowl. 

“The hell crawled up their ass,” Milo asks, slouching. Mike doesn’t bother because Erwin’s not bothered, not enough, just starring at the newly vacant seat. There’s an empty space by his elbow Mike didn’t comment on at first but now…

“Levi wasn’t hungry?” he ask. Let Erwin assume it’s a misdirection. 

“No,” he says simply, and excuses himself. 

The captain’s meeting with Shadis lacks Levi as well. In fact, Mike doesn’t see hide nor hair of him, doesn’t smell him or a whiff of tea for days. Erwin’s surly. They don’t use gear equipment in the winter, don’t fuck with misfortune that badly. They do maintenance mostly, work on repairs around the barracks, on equipment, try not to burn off their small meals and just survive because the earth wants to cut down their numbers with the cold bite of wind lacing its way through the networks of buildings that bunch up close to capital. Mike spars with Erwin just to spare the rest of the Corp from the job; if anyone’s feeling honest, they know only Mike or Levi can take Erwin in a fight in any consistent way.

“Don’t hold me down in the snow,” Mike warns. Erwin does it when he gets the chance like the complete bleeding asshole he is when he feels like being himself. With ice in his beard, Mike elbows Erwin in the jaw, soaked sleeve skating up to catch Erwin’s frigid red ear. Hurts like a bigger bitch than normal. They throw each other around, turning snow into gray spew with their clobbering steps. It’s nothing like the wolf howl fights that Levi and Erwin get up to in the dirt. It isn’t quite boys playing either. It’s when he has Erwin huffing and bucking underneath him that he decides it’s an interrogation.

“Where’s Levi?” Mike questions, cinching his hands around Erwin’s wrists tighter. He’s surprised he can even make a lock like that what with not being able to feel his fingers anymore and all. There’s ice chipped up under his nails. 

Erwin’s heaving breath makes a nice excuse for a stunted answer. “Don’t know.”

“Like hell you don’t.”

Erwin throws Mike off and they square up again, dancing and sliding on the mash of snow. It’d be a blood bath if they were different men. Feels like it. Their hands slip over one another, batting and cracking till they connect then they’re twisting like someone’s gonna snap an arm off. Erwin’s hitting Mike without seeing him. 

“I don’t,” Erwin repeats, spark behind his teeth. “He goes where he wants.”

“We both know you own him,” Mike spits. “Don’t pretend with me. I caught him for you. You got to keep him.”

It isn’t a bad thing, what they’ve done to Levi., not in the bigger scheme of it all. Levi was gunning for them, had his own hand in his capture, his cards. Death of that sweet little redhead and that boy who had liked Erwin, that’s sad. The first friends you lose to Titans always leave the biggest scar. Mike can smell the stale grief every time Levi stands around looking for people dead and decomposed. 

He’s cold enough that the fist to his mouth doesn’t hurt too bad the first second. Then he spits blood and his gums ache all the way up to his eyeballs. “Fuck, Erwin.”

Bastard doesn’t even apologize. Mike kicks his legs out, but neither of them stand up, just lay in the snow waiting to die, waiting forever till another Corpsman comes over to see if they _are_ dead. They get hauled to their feet. Erwin hovers guiltily and Mike shoves him ahead, hand never leaving him. They step pass everyone, boots melting and snow dripping from their hair till they get to Erwin’s room. 

Teeth chattering, Mike’s wanting to drop out of his mouth like old apples, they strip and crawl into Erwin’s bed naked as the day they were born, snug up against each other. Winter’s chaotic like that. Drills will degenerate till everyone’s back inside counting boot buckles or some shit. There’s half a quadrant out chopping wood. God forbid they run low on wood. Hearth’s roaring away in the mess nonstop and people have hot stones under their bedding every night. 

“Where’d you send him,” Mike asks again when he can feel his face. 

“I don’t own him.”

Mike snorts. His lip cracks and bleeds. “Like the Crown doesn’t own us.”

Erwin twitches. “Technically, all military personnel--”

“Don’t rules and regulations with me. Where’s Levi?”

Erwin’s eyes smoke, burned low. “Doing us all a favor. He’ll be back.” And then proving that Mike really doesn’t know Erwin at all, Erwin slides his thigh between Mike’s and shuffles closer, hands just-warm-enough coming around and low to his ass. “You want to fuck him,” Erwin retaliates, words pine sap sticking across Mike. Erwin kisses him despite his lips being a mess from his own punch. “He’s in your head,” he goes on, confidential, sympathetic. Like they’re in this together, ailing over Levi. “I don’t like when he’s gone either, you know.”

Mike lays there, just living, Erwin’s lips working over his face, chin, jaw, neck, slow and careful. He’s gonna do a thorough job. Mike’s gonna let him. And they’re gonna think about Levi the whole time they fuck.


	9. inconclusive

Despite what people say about Survey Corp soldiers, Mike does in fact possess common sense. Common sense advises he avoid Hanji. Not him specifically but the general public. The general public especially. That little expedition to record Titan regenerative properties? Inconclusive. Their team had conflicting data; times were off, sketches inconsistent, some of the notes ended up lost. Hanji has been livid, raging around, trying to draw some measure of data to work with from the shambles. They did think it a safe bet that while the epidermis would repair the quickest, if a limb had to regenerate it did not begin with any specific layer but the entire limb, crawling out from the raw stump - bone, muscle, tissue inching at the same pace. What they really wanted to know is slow-growth zones. Nape of the neck meant death, but how specific a region was that? What about the rest of the spine? If you can't kill a titan, what's the best way to slow it down? Good information for soldiers working Canon's. Etc etc. And that shit could not be known in two hours out on the field with soldiers twitching and jumping.

Hanji wants more time. A long-term experiment. Hanji wants Titans.

Erwin didn’t let them so much as propose the idea to Shadis. It made sense now why they are fighting. A lot of people are fighting Erwin these days. The thought gives Mike pause, a queasy roll of guilt that doesn't last as long as it should or as long as it once would have. 

Erwin makes himself into an obstacle as much as a guiding light. He used a bunch of bullshit circular talk but it boiled down to: shut up Hanji, now isn’t the time. And Hanji demanded when was the time and Erwin said “When I can give you this” and Hanji told him he better fucking hope they don’t die before that. 

Erwin's playing his hand slowly. Shadis can see it coming but can‘t do a thing about it, won‘t. He knows better. Erwin’s always been some kind of mastermind. Mike's known it since the day Erwin Smith made himself government property.

He and Erwin are doing well, better, like they’ve fucked the tension out of their relationship. Mostly, Mike's given up on keeping up with Erwin. He wants to know more, about everything, but it won’t come on his terms. That’s just how it is. He isn’t the right hand man anymore, but he’s still there, still a limb for Erwin. Still blood and brother. 

Maybe Levi offers relief because now Mike can take a step back from the golden glory of Erwin Smith and see more clearly the world around them, who he is as a man. He's a ready follower. Clarity itches behind his eyes. He prefers the devout purpose that Erwin and all his plans and promises give. Some soldiers try to keep to themselves, eunuchs and slaves to the cause, armoured in their solitaire hesitations. No distractions, no friends to mourn. Mike doesn't see the point in living like that. He'll be damned before he does. Mostly, Mike with his common sense keeps a low profile and minds his own business. Or he tries. He makes a valiant effort, hand to Maria. 

Can’t avoid much when he finds Levi dozing in his bed. Now that's a surprise. 'Course Levi wakes when Mike throws the covers off him. Mike startles and Levi twists over onto his side to fix Mike with an indignant look like _he’s_ the one in the wrong room. It's enough to make Mike smile. 

“Where the fuck have you been?” Mike asks without heat, dropping down onto the edge of his bed, having to hunch beneath Milo’s bunk. He works his boots off to the sound of Levi’s shifting. It's such a bizarre appearance, one that deserves more reaction, more consideration, but neither enjoy fanfare. If he told Levi he'd been worried, that he fought Erwin, interrogated him. _That he got punched in the face wondering over his tiny ass_...Levi would mock him.

If Mike got on his knees, maybe Levi would mock him the way he deserves. Mike's a soft-bellied fool.

“Playing Erwin’s shadowy hand,” Levi confesses on an exhale. He groans pleasantly – Mike looks over his shoulder to see him stretching. Levi actually fits into the bed with room to spare, unlike Mike. His hands slip under the gap in the headboard, tendons and muscles of his arms standing up. Mike could lock one hand around those wrists. Erwin's unflinching grip pulses in memory on the back of his neck. Levi's in his head, but so is Erwin. None of this will make it to the history books. 

Mike starts to ask what "shadowy hand" entails, but Levi’s got a slack exhausted look on him, face too worn out to looking peaceful. His cheeks and nose are red raw from cold and wind. Wherever he was, it hadn't been fun. 

“Why aren’t you in his bed?” Mike says instead, failing to curb his tone. Levi’s quiet as Mike stands to strip his pants and shirt off, refusing to pay too much mind to the cause of so many heated thoughts curled up in his bed. He's too old for flutters, so all the excitement strokes something nasty. But he's relieved Levi's back. It was unnerving with Levi gone. People out of sight too long -- Mike thinks they've died and his mind's lying to him. There's seeing ghosts, superimposed memory slicked along reality, then there's not remembering who's dead. He stops himself from touching Levi to make sure he's real. Feels too dramatic. 

“He doesn’t know I’m back. Well,” Levi sniffs humorlessly, “he probably does because he’s creepy like that. But I’m not dealing with him tonight. Too tired. And Hanji – the fuck happened while I was gone? I walked into our room and they about maimed me.” 

“Oh,” Mike says dumbly, suddenly realizing why Levi had come here: necessity. “Shit, yeah. They’re in a state right now. Erwin’s not much better. Good sense to avoid people while you can.”

“Sina’s tits,” Levi curses quietly, put upon. He stares up at Milo‘s empty bed, looking for sky and stars. If it wasn't as cold as a witch's tit outside, he'd be on the roof. “You’re sheets are kind of musty. People forget how to keep clean too?”

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Mike retorts smartly, climbing in and settling beside Levi like it isn’t anything to make his heart pound and his dick swell just feeling his hot body next to Mike’s, the bed already warm. Levi must have changed in his short time with Hanji because the hair of his naked legs wants to tangle itself with Mike's.

“Trust me; I know.”

Mike casts a sideways look at him, but he can’t read Levi’s face for shit, not even with the moon painting him pretty in light, the scorch of winter in his cheeks. 

The progression of Levi’s expressions in his time with the Corps made labelling them hard. Like a frog slowly boiled, no one could chart the way Levi looked at Erwin. The tender regard Erwin gave Levi, that’s when Mike made the mistake of calling it love slapped on Levi’s face. He knows better now. Language doesn’t have a solitary word for how Levi looks at Erwin. Mike thinks he's seen the same look on a cadet watching the Walls come into view with a rack of dead bodies rattling behind the horses. 

Laying next to him in bed is like nothing Mike’s ever felt before. Levi twitches, feet rubbing against each other, chest breathing easy and even, whole mind sunk in thought. He has a pull, a sinkhole presence. Mike doesn’t itch for him like a woman, doesn’t wanna throw an arm around him like with Erwin, holding onto something bigger than himself. Levi lays there like a long drop, and Mike suspects that if he rolls to touch him, he’ll roll off the side of Maria and never hit ground.

It’s tempting. But he knows if he tries anything, Levi won’t ever come back to him. Erwin isn’t the only one who can think ahead. So he grunts and settles into his bed, brushing up against Levi in the unavoidable crampness, Levi’s scent filling him up. It won't be the soundest sleep he's ever gotten but it won't be the worst.

“Hey,” Mike mumbles through the weight of impending sleep. “Don’t bust my face if I roll over on you.”

“Can’t promise you anything.” Levi sounds pleased that his reputation proceeds him.

Milo doesn’t see Levi when he comes in and Levi sneaks out before either of them wake. Mike wonders if he was even there because morning finds him at Erwin’s side like Levi never left, their shadows twinning over, black where they cross in the snow, a pair of devils walking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i put them in bed and nothing happens whoops


	10. Remember to breathe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> now with awesome fanart : http://sithiere.tumblr.com/image/158166576854

He is not alone. That's his small comfort, that's his terrible ghost. He is not alone in his hauntings. 

Levi slides into his lap in the unreality of night. Mike sees him fully. Scars he's never imagined grow thick over him. Somewhere beyond the walls, vines choke pillars; ruins fall; sand drifts to taller mounds. Levi's mouth opens under Mike's, for Mike's. Levi beckons with eager kisses. He's naked. Mike peels off his skin. He's naked. 

They leak into each other, their laps a puddle smeared in the dark folds found between tangled legs. Mike ends at the knee, begins again in Levi's femur. His feet. Mike wanted to start there. The bones like organ keys to hammer a hymn.

Nail him to the cross.

Mike doesn't know those words. They're dying for each other. The corps is just a body. 

He bites Levi's neck, tongues, bites. Levi moans, throws his head back, hair so dark he stops existing where shadow falls. Mike bites clear through his shoulder. There's no blood, but the bones crumble like soap, the flesh comes away like rotted wood. Levi holds tight, ruts. Mike takes him by the ass, thrusting into him, knocking Levi into his mouth. He goes, crumbling. He tastes like Missy. His bones clean Mike out. 

Mike wakes up hurting, hard, sweating, lifts from his bed with an unsteady creak of joints and wood. The sound of his shuffling feet pools around him, follows him out of his room, down the hall. He moans down the corridor, a raving ghost. He is not alone. He haunts into Erwin's room. The moon wakes the shadow beneath his feet, casts some fragment of the man he is to the floor.

They sleep. Levi and Erwin. Two grave mounds beneath a wool blanket. They sleep. Slept.

"Mike?" Erwin says in alarm, sitting up. Levi looks. The moon puts a fragment of herself in his eyes. 

"You didn't bleed."

He doesn't dare touch. Shadows cling to Levi, unmaking him. 

"I bleed," Levi promises, simple, understanding. That abyssal presence within Levi pulls Mike to the edge of the bed slowly, dragging man and shackled shadow over the floor. His cast-off head stretches to the door. There's an eye in the moon. 

"I piss and shit too. If you want proof of anything coming out of my body, say the word."

Mike kneels at the side of the bed like a child saying prayers.  "I woke you."

His shoulders shake. He wants for dawn. His hands shake. The blanket smells like tobacco. Stubs pot a bowl beside the bed. Bad habits in bed.

The room creaks, tilts. Erwin kneels beside him. It hurts his knees, a bruise pulsing under the weight. He fell on the ice, of all things.

"He bleeds," Erwin prays into Mike's ear.  He turns Mike's face towards him, presses their foreheads together. "He lives." 

Levi doesn't dare touch their communion. There's blood all down Mike's face. A nose bleed. It catches on Erwin's lip, the scar Levi put there, the one Mike sewed. The floor must be cold. The ground is so cold this time of year. Will they ask him to bleed for them? Will he bleed for them? Will he bleed?

Levi lights a cigarette, summer-red tip startled bright between his slender fingers.

Erwin's look at him, a thought hidden in his face, its deliverance misplaced in the dark. The blood's gone from his lip; one of them must have swallowed it. Levi's red-wet when he inspects the burning end of his leaf.

Mike grins at his ghastly glowed face. "There you are."

Levi copies his manic smile. "Here I am."


	11. boil

Winter worked through the days slowly. Erwin’s strategy to keep the Corp relevant and useful involved the best soldiers playing guard and escort to traveling nobles. In this shit weather, the Military Police were more than willing to wash their hands of the duty, after a practical show of resistance if only to make Shadis and Erwin work like mules for the whipping. It was everything Levi hated, but he had secured them this on Erwin’s orders. His disappearance weeks prior had been a show of goodwill on the Corps part to a traveling aristocrat, lending them their greatest sword hand, the strongest fighter this side of history. Levi would only take such a preposterous role on Erwin’s request. Neither made an attempt to hide that reality from Shadis. 

Erwin was a long line of heat, naked body woven with Levi’s, arms heavy in their embrace. He squirreled away from Erwin when the sky took its first hit of light, a pallid strip along the horizon. Levi held his breath in the silent morning, bare foot about to strike the floor and aid his escape. 

“Where you goin’?” Erwin slurred, rousing from sleep admirably, catching Levi about his narrow waist and hefting him surely back to bed, back astride him. 

“I will piss in this bed,” Levi warned even as he sank, wounded and adrift on the caressing tide of Erwin’s hands. 

“No, no, no,” Erwin repeated, kissing collarbone and shoulder, the ridge of a pectoral. “If you get out, you won’t get back in.” He settled himself against the pillows, rolling Levi neatly beneath him and throwing his thigh around his legs should he make a break for it.

“I have to go whore myself out,” Levi sighed, sweeping his hands through Erwin’s bright hair. The gall of this man. The greatness of him. Erwin didn’t consider either of them invincible, Levi knew that, but Erwin lived with the surety of victory. As if he had no other options. Erwin would take the world by the throat and haul it to a righteous light. The contagion of his belief infected Levi, crazed him, a fever sick devotion that burned through his blood. He’d bleed himself dry for Erwin. 

“I know.” Erwin kissed his jaw, nibbling to his earlobe, hands wandering possessive and reassuring over Levi’s back. “That’s why I want you to stay. For me.” 

What difference would half an hour make to the world if Levi enjoyed the breadth of Erwin’s chest, the war drum of his heart, for that much longer? He relented, turning his face to accept the kisses Erwin gave him freely. He bowed his head to catch open lips.

_Time drifts_

The towering trees of the outlying forest float above the thick fog, canopies dim smokestacks. If the city burned, it would look how the day looks; sky pushing down so thick their lungs grow damp on hidden rain. Mike can’t imagine worse weather. Erwin promised him the night before that soon enough, he’ll be in command. 

“I know you want a handpicked squad,” Erwin had said, holding Mike by the back of his neck, palm warm, callous and sturdy. “I’ll give you anyone you want,” he promised, drawing Mike in so they could rest their foreheads together, Erwin looking up through his lashes, golden tips catching with Mike’s darker ones. His kiss tasted like tea, and Mike broke it knowing Levi had been there this morning with him. 

The thought gave him only the briefest pause, Erwin slack-lipped and considering, when Mike surged against him, pushing his soon-to-be Commander against the nearest wall and kissing the devil out of him. 

“I get first dibs.” He left Erwin’s lips bitten, left the evidence for Levi to share, as surely he would before taking his leave for a months time from Erwin. Shadis could not spare Erwin for so long, for such a mission, keeping the burning flame of his ruin close at hand. Mike, Levi, Chana, and Milo ranked the highest, put in charge of four-man teams apiece.

_Time drifts_

“How shitty would it be if we all died on this stupid fucking job,” Levi complained in a low tone, peering over his horse’s neck at the murky ground. Fog wove up the horses legs, over their heads. It grew out of the snowy wasteland of the outskirts of Humanity. The low-slant of sunlight cast a glome, breathy ghosts curling off the ground, drifting to the pines in silent omen. It made the roll of the cart, the clop of hooves sound muffled. No one dared to speak; the footing treacherous with ice and the forewarning of a barbaric gang of highway robbers successfully putting them on edge. Mike, nose red and nostrils running, loathed the stifled senses that winter brought. 

“Talk a little louder so the Duke paying us hears you,” Milo groused from further back. It was kind of bad that Milo could hear Levi, the dead winter still letting voices carry too easily. 

“Maybe I will!” Levi jeered, rising up on his mount, flicking his hair back into his hood ineffectually. “Shit, goddamn, Erwin.” He settled his ass back into his saddle, shivering harshly all over. Poor bastard’s been forced to spend more time outside than any of them. It was obvious above the muffle of his scarf that he hadn’t bothered to shave his morning stubble. No one had-- only Nanaba of the men boasted a smooth face, too fresh for anything otherwise. They’ve seen blood before. This would be a good test for them; Mike had his eye on the quick fellah.

But the fog of the high noon gave way to dark and cold. They followed the impression of a road long beaten, mostly gone with snow. The Clydesdales carting Fauvrier clumped under their coats in the night. The soldiers drew tents and blankets, brought their horses in underneath the makeshift roof where they fit everyone and everything living breath and producing body heat. 

_Time drifts_

 

Not that winter treated them kindly before, but at least–now this might only be Mike–but at least there was a bed at the barracks. He said as much aloud. Milo had the decency to laugh. Nanaba sank deeper in on himself, unamused, eyes gloomy in the dark. 

“This is shit, sir.” Milo clapped Nanaba on the shoulder roughly and shook the boy. 

“Cheer up, Nanaba. This is a vacation.” 

Nichola, stuffed into her coat and blanket, coughed wetly. “A rare bonus.” 

Levi, snug up against his sleeping horse, cut his eyes to Nichola. “You didn’t sound like that yesterday." 

Mike looked at Levi before he looked at Nichola, tracking the quiver of his shoulders as a shiver took him again and again. But Nichola–red across her forehead, down her round nose. All awake eyes fell on her.  
She sank under their collective weight. 

"You can all worry when I hack up my lungs."

"If any one of you drops before me,” Levi warned, trembling thoroughly – clenching his jaw against the seize of cold. Mike swallowed as he in turn was looked upon, the furious promise in Levi’s regard, the hand of God counting time– Fauvrier slept sound in his carriage, a sheath of Titan-slayers cased round him– –

_“You cannot fight Nature herself.”_

Levi startled awake, jarring up against the stiff wrap of his blanket and cloak, arms flailing for a weapon. Mike pressed him still against the hard ground, hushing him, his fluttering lids. Levi was a haunt of shadows in the dark morning.

“Goddamnit,” Levi hissed, collapsing exhausted and groaning with stiffness. Mike huffed a laugh, sitting him up. “I only just fell asleep,” Levi groused.

“Unfortunately untrue." 

The crooked crescent of Levi’s teeth shone in the pit of his mouth as he let his head lull back, neck curved and exposed, black beard thinning in its creep down from his jaw. Mike only just began to trace its coarseness with presuming fingers when he caught the white-slit glare of Levi’s discerning eyes. Mike shifted away. "Milo says a storm’s coming.” 

Levi sat up slowly, untucking himself, something falling across his face as foreboding as the dark clouds rolling from the distance. “If any one of them drops before me,” Levi repeated, picking up his captain’s sword for all the good it could do against the reckoning of the sky. 

But Mike had come to believe in Levi as he did in Erwin, in an eternal blaze born from double lighting strikes on this scorched and unsacred world. A twin harrowing. What love would be in them, with them. He before any would drop before Levi, humbled, begging. His bones! He would lay down his very bones! At the heights of his foolishness, Mike believed Levi capable of slaying the sun. 

_Time drifts_

The horses balked. The carriage wheels caught. The greater indifference of Nature prevailed, more ruthless and taxing than the supposed bloodthirsty bandits Fauvrier feared. 

“You have orders!” Fauvrier cried, deigning their struggle with the crack of his carriage door. 

“The only order I received commanded to me the safety of this party, in its entirety,” Levi sneered, pushing the nobleman into his carriage, slamming the door and cracking the locked fixed shut. “Enough of this fuckwad, and fuck the mission. A map!” 

Nanaba, with the too-soft eyes of the youngest son, stared blearily in fever. He still had babycurls at the base of his neck, dark with sick-sweat. Mike cradled him to his chest. Not one more. Not another child. 

“Can the captain do that?” Nanaba slurred to Mike. He moaned, trying to straighten, heft his bones against a drugged weight. 

“He’s following orders. Hush, you, now.”

The rest of the soldiers readily obliged Levi. They set an immediate course to the nearest plotted village, a scattered indication of civility amongst this threshold of wilderness. Nanaba burned up in Mike’s arms as they made slow trudging way. It was well enough that the boy had slipped from his mount when he had: any further and horse and rider would’ve fallen to their death in the terrain. Killed inside the walls, too unfit a fate even for as green a boy as little Nana. Nichola passed out with fever at the same time a house and barn came into view, a stiff dark patch through a haze of snow. 

Levi yanked his scarf down and stood up in his stirrups. “Into the barn. We’re quartering.” 

Just like that. Mike bit blood inside his cheek with want for Erwin. Throwing military power around over civilians didn’t suit him, and he knew it was at the bottom of Levi’s desires too, but the situation demanded their imposition. 

“Milo, Chana, get everyone into the barn,” Mike yelled, turning to survey their team, counting heads. He held Nana’s sagged weight closer. “Just a bit more, son.” 

A crunch of sound brought his attention back to Levi who had ridden back beside the steaming horses pulling Fauvrier’s carriage. He was shaking the coachman. 

“Frozen dead,” Levi barked, pulling his mount away, dismay stark on his face. “Poor fool in his feathers." 

The Corps in hearing range passed their eyes over the bedecked corpse: shiny buttons and lace cuffs had driven him to a slow, thoughtless death. The preventability, the absolute meaninglessness of it, enraged them. Here they were dying righteously, and blockhead nobles and their dumb servants died without cause. Cold. Died with cold. Mike shook his head, snow caught in his lashes. 

"Fauvrier comes with us. Let’s find the owner of this farm,” he ordered. Levi nodded once, pulling his scarf back over his face, squinting into the rising storm. 

When Mike opened the carriage door, having to all but rip the thing off its hinges with a cannon shatter of ice, Fauvrier came falling with it, off the ledge and into the snow. Levi jumped back, brows shooting up. 

“Monroe!” Fauvrier cried. The nobleman shot round to the front of the carriage, for all the world indifferent to snow and cold. “Dead! Oh, poor man, Monroe, dead!”

The two captains took in the scene in mute surprise to see and hear the raised lament. Fauvrier rocked the stiff corpse of his coachman, clutching the body. Was it shameful to expect revulsion of the dead? “Unfortunate soul! Why did you go quietly?” 

“Why did you dress him for a ball,” Levi said under his breath. Mike dropped a heavy hand onto his head, fussing him beneath his hood. Levi allowed it longer than Mike expected before he was shrugged off as Levi took for his horse. 

“No dying on me,” Mike caught him saying to the slumped form of Nichola. They’d strapped her to her saddle and bridle and lashed her mount with Levi’s, as close as they’d been to shelter. Levi rubbed her back before he took his reigns and walked his horse to the house.

_Time drifts_

They pounded upon the door to the house with unparalleled gusto, raising their voices to distinguish their commotion from that of the storm’s. On the cusp of breaking into the house, a candle bloomed to life behind a narrow dark window; a voiced hollered from beyond the wood, the door fell open and they in, all save the horses. Mike held the weak Nanaba and Nichola upright, their arms slung about his shoulders, while Levi stood taut, ready, and Fauvrier, meek with unease, announced them to the family staring wide-eyed. 

“In, and close the door,” the family head ordered, a rough looking man, leather skinned with long days. They obliged.  
~~ 

The Springers hosted them with silent acquiescence. They had no choice. Fauvrier recovered too quickly from his fear and grief, desiring the respectful and attentive treatment he assumed rightfully his. Levi and Mr. Springer wore matching, muted sneers as Fauvrier made demands of the family. Mike put his attention to establishing Nana and Nichola by the fireplace. Snow melted to warm water. Twin sons delivered pots to the Corpsmen in the barn. 

“You’ll be compensated when it’s possible,” Mike assured Mr. Springer from his spot kneeling beside Nana. The boy shivered under his hand, Mike’s palm covering their chill-slick forehead. “When the storm passes, so will we.” 

“What’s the Survey Corp doing out here in the first place?” Mike looked up, catching sight of the old man licking dry cracked lips. Accusation covered the tremor of fear in his voice. 

“Not hunting Titans,” Mike shook his head. Levi sniffed from his seat; he’d taken no food from the family but accepted a pot of tea with a grateful nod of his head. 

“I hired them for protection,” Fauvrier said. He ate enthusiastically, a daughter at his elbow. 

“I didn’t realize you were mercenaries,” the oldest boy bit quietly.

“Jeremiah,” his mother scolded. 

“They are when the times demand,” Fauvrier said magnanimously. He reached back his hand, knuckles brushing over the daughter’s stomach– he made a gesture for more soup. Levi’s jaw tightened. 

“Don’t taxes sustain you?” Mrs. Springer asked, wiping her hands as she switched out another pot of water. Mike was surprised that these were the questions asked of them, rather than curiosity over titans. He and Levi shrugged their way out of the inquiry. 

“I’m never going anywhere without Erwin again,” Levi muttered to him, words barely loud enough to make it up to Mike’s ear. They do, slither in, then drop down to his stomach to tighten, sick and hard. A wave of heat blasts up to his head, a dizzy spell. “Ah fuck, not you too,” Levi swore, sitting Mike down onto a chair, back of his hand stamped to Mike’s forehead. 

“I’m fine. Water–can I have some water?” So the little farmer daughter handed him a chipped crockery and the clay lip tastes like worms but the water’s too cold to taste and that goes down into his stomach too, drowning out too-tight words. Levi’s crouched over him, wind-burned, bloody-chapped lips like a new scar red out from a thick beard. God, he grows hair like a beast, black-thicket. He’s a dark bush of berries. Blood keeps surging, up, hot and up. _There was a family, in a balloon. Bang bang. Time drifts._ He woke holding Nana, spooned up in the corner of the room, dry hay crinkling with every breath. Levi’s pacing; Fauvrier’s gone; a little boy poking the fire chatters away, northern accent cutting half the noise out of the words, slinging them happy-rush from his gap-tooth mouth. 

“Captain,” Nana mumbled, shuddering hard. Levi paused, looking over to them as Mike curls Nana closer. Nichola’s snoring peacefully. Out. In. 

_Time drifts_

“I don’t much care if you’re Survey Corp or Military Police or the King Himself,” Mr. Springer said to a shifty Levi and an indignant Fauvrier. 

“You will be compensated,” Levi replies for what must be the third time judging by his thin patience. Milo’s there, parade rest over his shoulder. 

“That’s well and good but what I want--what I know the people want better than compensation for quartering--is reform.”

“That’s not what we do,” Levi wearies. “We kill Titans, not–”

“What you are doesn’t make a difference. Kill titans, get killed, let’s the walls overrun. You think we hear’a that way up here? Titans could come through the walls and it’d be past reason till they sent word up here. Kill the King and it wouldn’t come to these parts till past reason either. Compensation. You think replacing the bite you ate is what we need? Do us half a measure better and have this son of a Duke improve the region. Pay the outskirts a mind'n not like Humanity quits where the road goes rocky.” 

“Levi,” Mike barked, shoving to his feet in a scuffle of hay. His head swam, and his eyes kept up a gray veil that bends the people before him. Boots on hard-packed earth and a crackling fire.

Relief breaks through the cracks in Levi‘s expression: “You done dying on me?”

"Like I’d go any way less than teeth,” Mike said darkly. He shook himself, that fever-fog, off and leans into Levi. Nana’s sat up now, blinking and newborn looking. 

“I’d rather leave our sick with some money here with Milo and a few others, the youngest, and get the fuck on,” Levi whispered, clutching Mike’s shoulder and rocking onto his toes. “That son of a Duke is gonna turn a bunch of farmer-folk on us and that’s just the shitstorm we need dragging back to Erwin.”

“How long was I out?” 

“It’s only the next night. We lost a whole day.” 

Things were not going well. Fauvrier and them slept in the kitchen with the rest of the Corp cozied in the barn and the Sprinters nestled in the other big room of the house. Storm’s blowing in the morning. Mike and Milo duck through it to the barn to check the order and condition of their soldiers and found them in surprisingly good spirits considering. 

“You want to divide up?” Chana questioned as Mike layed out the plan. 

“If we need to; I’d rather risk a squabble than a life.” But everyone felt the same. Such a thing came far sooner than anticipated.

Mr. Springer knew that he would die before his hand could fall, before he would feel the crick of his elbow in the widening angle of his stroke. But he put his weight into his conviction, a falling helpless defeat, war cry of outrage and woundedness its solitary companion.

To the surprise of all in the room– save Mike–pleasure suffused him, not surprise–Captain Levi drew not his sword but his bare palms, stretching limbs tall upwards, locking sure fingers around the strained tendons of Mr. Springer’s wrists. The room choked on the stay; Fauvrier’s wobbling chin stilled, fear-flush all rushed down his throat.

“Sir." 

Mike could see only the back of Levi and the face of Mr. Springer, the widening of that heartfelt wound clear on his face. The ghost of Levi’s expression reflected in the pasture of little Nanaba’s eyes. He would come to swear that Captain Levi had been weeping, though Levi’s eyes were no more red than ever when the scene ended.

"Sir,” Levi repeated. So quiet, angerless, blameless. Mike surveyed the vulnerable stretch of his body, the ease of his arms holding the press of Mr. Springer’s would-be blow, hunting knife a pale streak suspended in the dim light of the home. Winter howled her fury, urging with the mystos of wolf wails caught in her veils.

“You do not want to kill a man,” Levi said solemnly. A heartbeat of time lept between captain and farmer. Some blood-quick truth that sank and sank across the barn. Nanaba’s hand slipped weakly from the hilt of his dagger.

If it was up to Levi, he would have abandoned Fauvrier in an icy chasm. But they had a mission to complete, ignoble though it was. Mike and Chana got them through, with Milo staying at the Springer household with Nana and Nichola, who though improved, wouldn’t be risked. Besides, the three of them were perhaps the most likeable people in their party and somewhat necessary at this time to maintain calm and reduce tension among the civilians. Fauvrier, who had made drastic and unwise implications to Mr. Springer about the outcome of the farming class in such a low-arable land that didn’t even have the upstart for sheep farming, kept his mouth shut, humbled and nervous. The whole thing had pushed Levi into such foul spirits that even Mike avoided him. 

They reached the city and dumped Fauvrier at his manor. He paid Mike directly, stuttering about his father and his own misconceptions. Fucking hell, Mike pitied Erwin fiercely for having to deal with people of this sort. 

The return home went far more smoothly, with the Springers paid, animosity mostly bulled over. Surprisingly, Levi wanted a word with Mr. Springer. He appeared at Mike’s side within a few minutes, shoulders slumped, but the rage in him muted under exhaustion.

“What was that about?” Mike dared to ask, taking Levi’s voluntary presence at his side as a good thing. 

“We’re irrelevant. We do nothing for people like this, for anyone.” 

Mike knew he ought to tell Levi to keep it to himself, at least till they were back at the base, but no one was close enough to hear Levi’s low moping. Fuck it. It was rare enough for Levi to talk about his expectations of the Corp that Mike didn’t want to miss the chance. Irrelevant. Levi never talked about them like that. Just like Erwin, he put stock into every soldier, every life that they met even if he wouldn’t let himself remember their faces half the time. 

At Mike’s silence, Levi glanced over to confirm his attention and curiosity before continuing: “That old man was right. Who are the Corp to folk who don’t fear Titan cause they’re too busy starving and falling sick and getting fucked over by a bunch of city-pigs. Titans never bothered me in the slums.”

“That’s the counter-argument to us.”

“It’s not a counter to us,” Levi bristled, “it’s just a fact. Is more than that, Mike. Everyone’s crooked. That shit-eating son of a Duke had no regard--what’s the point of attacking the problem over the walls when everything inside here is rotting shit. Erwin’s convinced the answer’s out there --and I believe him -- I think we can win, some days--with him--he can think his way out of a grave, I believe him--but. Fuck. Fuck.” Levi inhaled, breathed out a ragged plume of white. “I’m tired.” He dug his heels into his horse’s flank, clipping ahead with chomping hooves in the snow, and abandoned the outburst entirely. 

_Time drifts_

The first thing Levi said to Erwin when the party breaks apart and Mike, Levi, Chana and Milo debrief was “Never again.” And in an act of old rebelliousness reminiscence of when Levi first joined them, when Mike didn’t trust him and itched to throw him to the ground, Levi stormed out of the office. Shadis shouted at him to return but barely put in the effort, resigned. Erwin had shot to his feet and stood spear-straight, jaw tight and eyes blazing. 

Milo mimed a beheading. Chana kept her head down, though she shot Mike a covert look somewhere between worry and frustration. 

“Report,” Shadis ordered, heaving a sigh. Erwin took his seat, laying his hand over the report Mike wrote up, along with Milo’s supplementary material from his time at the Springers. 

If Nanaba finds Mike leaning outside of Erwin’s room, eavesdropping on the muffled fight being waged between four tight walls, no one needs to know.

“Captain Zacharias,” the kid salutes, sharp and guilty, chest puffed out and chin tipped in their best attempt at the look of a proper solder. “Sir, I’d like to apologize, sir, for failing you on this mission.”

A crash--Mike’s pretty sure that’s a table being toppled--beats out from the door. Nanaba flinches, eyes shooting to the door and stance breaking, mouth falling open, before they flush up and draw stiff before Mike once more.

This is the part where Mike walks Nana away, talks to him about duty and being a good soldier and following orders. Tells him he didn’t do anything wrong and do you see Nichola here apologizing? Or maybe Mike just says Run a lap if it makes you feel better. 

Mike jabs a thumb at the door. “You hear that,” he prompts softly.

Nana breaks out in a sweat not unlike their fever chill one. His eyes wobble to the door: “Yes, sir.”

“What do you think that is?”

Judging by Nanaba’s fearful expression, it’s clear he thinks it’s some kind of trap or trick question. “Levi was the commandeering officer. If you think you need to apologize, do it to him.”

An aberrant couldn’t put the fear of god into Nana like Mike just did. “Sir!” the kid squeaks. Mike inhales deeply, sagging. 

“Do it.”

The loud arguing continues inside. It doesn’t even falter at Nanaba’s shaking, timid knock. Mike slams the side of his fist against the door, shaking it on its bolts, making Nana jump a foot. Boy’s on the edge of tears by the time Erwin swings the door wide, drawing up short, surprised, at the quivering scout. 

“L-Lieutenant Commander,” Nanaba salutes. “Lieutenant Commander Smith.”

“Yes?” Erwin asks tightly, flushed and out of breath though his expression is flat and restrained.

“Is Captain Levi, uhm, there?”

That throws Erwin for a loop. He sticks his head out of the door and catches sight of Mike up against the wall. His brows furrow but the door flings open to reveal a freshly shaven if slightly rumpled Levi, barely dressed but visibly so because of a recent bath. Or so Nanaba will respectfully assume. 

“What?” He sizes Nanaba up, toe to shoulder; he’s got that off look on him, and it takes Levi a good full-body twitch till he snaps his eyes to meet Nanaba’s, expression cutting. 

Mike worries for one moment that Nanaba’s gonna piss himself with Levi looking so unhinged, something haunted in his eyes as they train on the scout. Erwin’s staring at Mike, expression unreadable, his control back in place.

“Sir, I’d like to apologize for my weakness during the mission.”

The ludicrousness of the words wipe away Levi’s nerves. He goes flat, unamused. Then, he leans back, nose wrinkled. “That’s the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Levi,” Erwin admonishes, making a face. 

Levi gestures at Nanaba with a flap of his hand. “I’m not going to have kids apologize to me for not dying.” He rolls his eyes from Erwin back to Nana, fixing on him. “You did nothing to apologize for; go rest.”

Mercifully, Erwin shoos Nanaba with a simple “Dismissed,” that sends the boy all but running down the hall. Mike pushes off the wall, stepping up to Erwin and Levi who almost instantly droop to each side of the doorframe. 

“I’m fucking exhausted. You think that’s funny, Mike,” Levi bitches. He scrapes a hand through his wet hair, pushing it back, groaning as he turns his neck and something pops. He lets his head rest against the frame, eyes closed, humming. “You’re an asshole.”

Mike watches him with satisfaction. So does Erwin. Together, they look at each other, and Erwin dips his chin slightly in thanks. The fight’s flushed out of the room through the open door, weaving around the three of them. 

“I think Nanaba almost shit his pants, Mike,” Erwin eventually breaks. Levi snorts, laughing through a genuine grin, though he keeps his eyes closed and head tipped back like he’s too tired to pick it up again. Erwin’s back to watching him, eyes smoothing down his clean chin, the exposed length of his neck and chest through the open buttons of his shirt.

Mike looks into the room finally. The nightstand is on its side, the draw fallen out and broken. “I had to save your furniture somehow.” 

Erwin’s smile twitches and sobers, but Levi only grins harder, clenching his teeth against the evidence of the fight. 

“Still an asshole.”

“Mike’s right,” Erwin says with a shake of his head. He clasps Mike on the shoulder, apologetic and thankful in turn. He pulls Mike in a little, and for a second, Mike thinks Erwin is going to kiss him.

“You’re my best defense,” Erwin confesses, squeezing Mike’s shoulder and sliding his palm down his arm in a long lingering touch that warms Mike, makes him want to fall in through the door and close up in those four tight walls. 

“Should keep him closer at hand,” Levi observes, eyes cracked open finally, eyebrow arched, as he considers Erwin’s hand wrapped loosely around Mike’s wrist. It’s only then that Mike sees the hand Erwin has on the back of Levi’s neck.


	12. order

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end. it all came to a close suddenly. I've been free-balling this. Well! That was fun

Mud season around the bend of a white winter, the settling thaw brought with it a crackling change. The hard heel of boots bit into the ground, minor earthquakes, fissures in the brittle dirt. Shadis rounded about and about the barracks, head tipped, neck a bone-narrow thing bare in the stock chill morning. Early risers peered covertly from the windows and the doors; white linen snapped over laundry lines. Levi smoked, clouds from his narrow nostrils, clouds from his raw mouth. He straightened damp sheets over the lines with numb fingers, clothes-pins tattling innocent secrets from a heaped bag over his arm.

A soft knock beckoned Mike from his own distant spying at the window, drew him away from the ledge. 

“Would you like to join me in town?” Erwin asked when Mike opened the door; he stood relaxed, almost at ease in civilian clothes. Mike turned silently to slip his feet into a pair of battered brown boots, fur lining closing high over his ankles. 

They detoured from the main exit, Mike abreast Erwin, keeping a steady pace as they made for a forest of blocked white and the in-and-out form of Levi hanging sheets like meat on hooks. The slow burn sun rising brought sky and earth to a close seam; morning eased in; spring hummed far-off; wading in; a black nest of hair in a white kerchief; boots on thawing earth.

“We’re going,” Erwin announced, drawing still to Levi. He tilted his head slightly, a pane of light on his cheek, surveying the laundry that would bleach out.

Levi made a small noise, running his purples fingers over a shirt. Erwin fixed the shoulders, stretching the fabric taut where Levi couldn’t reach. His hand fell to Levi; first a palm flat on his head, smoothing now the folds of the kerchief, then catching up Levi’s cold hand–first one, then, Mike watched Levi allow Erwin to take the second and press them between his own larger, warmer hands. Erwin folded Levi into him, between him, like a pressed flower, the tome of his palms secret-keeping.

“Thank you,” Erwin said softly. Levi, who had been staring past Erwin, past the linens and the barracks and this world, cocked his head sideways, then back, till he could peer up at Erwin’s quiet smile. 

Mike noticed now the size and quality of the shirt, the accenting thread at the collar and cuffs so carefully folded. Erwin’s whites had never been whiter. And Mike kept a blackened sheet of Missy’s blood. 

Mike chuckled at the thought. He covered his smile with the back of his hand, but too late. Erwin had released Levi and turned a curious and amused look to him, and Levi was clicking his tongue, arms crossed, hands disappeared into the wedge of his elbows.

“Get gone before the streets are overrun,” Levi shooed, sidestepping away and around Erwin’s shirt. Unwilling to lose the sudden boom of energy, Mike took Erwin’s arm up in his own, bright spirit and suddenness a surprise to them both, and hauled him off, sides bumping and sliding together. The flex of Erwin’s arm around his own, a hand coming to fold over his, wide fingers slotting in the crooks of his knuckles, did not surprise Mike.

~~

“Shadis will announce my succession as Commander this evening.”

Mike blew on his tea, composed. Erwin leaned closer, their knees slotted underneath the table. His folded arms on the table were near to knocking the teapot into Mike’s lap. 

They were inside a familiar shop; a fire kept it cozy; the bread came from next door. The owner’s lungs disallowed patrons from smoking, making it a favorite place in town for Mike when he wanted a touch of civilian life. 

An urgent gleam in Erwin’s life prompted Mike to set his cup down. Almost immediately, Erwin clasped his hand, fingers tucking around Mike’s thumb. 

“Michael.“ A heart made a racket in Mike’s chest. Erwin squeezed Mike’s hand a fraction more, thumb drawing a line of friction over the skin of his wrist, feeling that rackety pulse. "I want to announce you as my Lieutenant Commander.”

It’s a good thing Mike had stopped drinking his tea or he would have spat it out or dribbled it down his chin when his mouth went slack on his dumbstruck face. 

He found his words clumsily. “What about Levi?”

“I need you,” Erwin confirmed without hesitation. He withdrew his touch with a pat to Mike’s hand but did not lean away, instead inching his chair forward more with a squeak of wood and huddling his shoulders forward.

“You have always been my right hand, Mike. You know the soldiers better than any senior soldier, your combat and strategy is excellent. I’ll be restricted to the rear center of the formation; you’ll primarily run point position with alterations as necessary obviously and can assume multiple squads–”

“Erwin,” Mike cut him off, blowing out a shaky breath. “Don’t sell this to me.”

He couldn’t stand Erwin’s treatise and offers, the distance such rhetoric put between them and honesty. And with these words, Erwin had gone tense again, eyes filling with shadows and worry.

“You’ve always been with me,” Erwin confided, looking down at their hands. He turned his palm slightly to drag his two forefingers over a deep scar from a bloody and rainy day. Mike picked up his tea to occupy his mouth. His tongue ached to give familiar comforts, make familiar promises. “I trust you, and the soldiers trust you.”

“Then call me lieutenant commander,” Mike shrugged, slouching back into his chair. The intial proposal had caught him off guard, yes, but what Erwin said made sense. Mike had assumed Levi would be offered the position, but not out of overall merit; it was a miscalculation of dyspotism that Mike waved from his mind. Erwin saw him as the best man for his second and, now, Mike wondered why’d he’d ever doubted that. Because they didn’t share a bed like they had? If anything, Erwin had been planning this move for years.

It took a moment after the words for Erwin to look at him. His gaze was changed all over, all cold viciousness and intent, a foreboding sternness in his lip. 

“Do you trust me?”

The smooth ceramic of the cup touched briefly to Mike’s lip, only an instant, drink rejected as the big man set it down with a clatter on its saucer and shifted his whole body in an agitated twitch. Mike felt his face rumple, a snort eject from his nose.

“No,” he drawled, tone sardonic, “I’m just gonna go swearing my life to a lying ass in an alley. Raze Maria, Erwin, what kind of question is that?”

“The most important one,” Erwin said soberly. The unbudging grimness of Erwin’s expression and his stark voice set Mike to unease. This was not a prompt for comfort but a forswearing, an ask for oath. 

“What is it?” Mike whispered. He glanced around the near empty room, senses on guard.

Erwin unnerved him, in general but now more than he had since they’d first met. Erwin, who voluntarily transferred to the Survey Corp from a tidy captain’s position in the Military Police. He’d risen quickly there and, with words of bravado, glory and freedom, elbowed his way into the Corp, fitting himself for his own noose. That alone had made him an alien figure in the ranks, and though the first time outside fo the gates, a bloodbath, had shaken Erwin, from then on he’d been steady, a long-burning fire. Warm, so warm. He’d been so easy to love, half-mad, restless. He’d fallen hard into Mike’s bed when offered the chance; knew he way around the body there as well as he did in the field. But trust? If you didn’t trust the man at your back, you’d be dead looking over your shoulder.

“Can I trust you anymore than I already do, ready to die on your call?”

Erwin’s flinch satisfied Mike, that break in control.

“We’re going to finish this war, Mike,” Erwin promised.

“Yeah,” he grinned. Mike wished for harder stuff than tea.

Licking his bottom lip in deliberation, Erwin hesitated before heaving a deep sigh through his nose, a weariness coming to his eyes. “Do you know why the Survey Corp was begun?”

“Is this a trick?” Mike asked suspiciously. “Or do you want me to recite one of your heroic speeches?”

“Yes and no. For almost all of our history, we have barely maintained our ranks. Every budget request is a fight. Sometimes, we bring something back from the outside on very good missions. We put up an outpost. We make an inkling of progress. Most times, we lose a third of our soldiers, the people want to riot our ruin. In twelve commanders, our only progress has been learning how better to kill and die.”

Of all things, Levi’s words echoed back to Mike. _What’s the point in attacking the problem over the walls when everything inside here is rotting shit?_ Maybe those thoughts weren’t merely Levi’s fatigue talking. “We’re irrelevant.”

Erwin’s mouth spread between a smile and a retch. “No. We’re control.” His face took on a ghost of horror-past, eyes wild with the reveal. “Our biggest supports historically are people so far into Sina that Titans are ghost stories. Nobles with vaults of food. Wallists who should be condemning us. Landowners whose tenants come to us out of necessity when they can‘t keep up. Do you know what a friend once told me before the Military Police cut his throat? The Survey Corp will never be dismembered. Someone will always pay to arm us and send us outside the Walls because that’s how order is kept. The people that want change, the people who yearn for freedom not just from the black shadows of the Walls but from the poverty that breaks their backs, the people who doubt the King, the Church, the Police, they come to us. And they die. There is no better way to quell any uprising than to dangle a false promise that does the killing and the cleanup for you.”

_Titans never bothered me in the slums._

Tears stung at line of Mike’s eyes. He inhaled sharply through his nose, opening his sticky-dry mouth for air that blew into his chest like a draft. When the drought hit a two years ago, their numbers had soared. When riots had taken up the southern territories over the price of wheat and restrictions on water, a funder had come through to the Corp. They’d recruited; whole families but the babes had switched out a hoe for a blade. Order had returned. Nothing changed.

\--  
With the sun low behind Shadis’s head, he announced Erwin’s succession to the fixed forms of once-was-his soldiers. Erwin orated, salutes were made. Mike bowed his head and stood straight when given his new title. There were cheers for their new golden commander, and the noise curled sulpher in Mike’s gut. His breath chattered out of his teeth, and clicking his jaw shut brought his head up to catch sight of a dark cloaked figure on the barracks rooftop, a thin white plume drifting over his head. The sight was enough to calm Mike’s bones.

Milo, Chana, and Hanji, of all people, surged Erwin once the formalities ended. Standing at his side, Mike got the full view of Erwin’s startled expression as he was nearly tackled to his feet, clapped up in hugs. Mike side-stepped it, shaking his head at the pitiful confusion and charmed blush on Erwin’s face.

“Sir,” Mike said, heels clipping together in front of Shadis. He extended his hand. “It was a hell of a time serving with you.”

Shadis clasped his hand firmly, almost smiling. “Zacharias.” Shadis tugged him in a step, still strong, still the strength of a man who bore so many deaths for so many years. “Keep Erwin alive, as long as you can.”

“You know better than to say that,” Mike grimaced. Shadis chuckled, patting his hand before releasing it. God, he looked old. 

“I know.” Shadis looked at Erwin being drug off for what would be brutal round of drinks and cards. “But try anyway, Zacharias.”

“Mike!” 

Mike jerked his head to see Erwin, still young, still golden, waving to him, grinning. “Are you coming?” he called.

Mike lifted his hand, waving an affirmation. Erwin’s rare, blinding smile beamed at him. Hanji yipped, bouncing ahead. “I’m going to try my fucking hardest, sir.”

\--  
Intuition carried Mike to the roof. Shingles clicked under his heels, announcing him well in advance, but no one could sneak up on Levi regardless of noise. With a groan, he dropped down beside Levi, feet dangling over the edge, moon dangling up ahead. 

“You coming to play cards?” Mike asked, putting his weight on his elbows. The sweet tobacco filled his nose, and he closed his eyes under the unending sky. 

“When I’m done. Erwin’ll come after me if I don’t. Good night for team building and some shit, welcome in the new…regime…or whatever the fuck.”

“Hey,” Mike chided, bumping against him, “you like them. Us. You like us. And,” Mike bumped him again, “you like cards.”

Levi snickered, swinging his legs over the drop. In the dark, on this night, he looked young too. “You know me well.”

“And I know your fingers are frozen around that cigarette.”

For that, Levi blew his face full of smoke. “Don’t get wise with me,” he threatened lightly, bumping Mike back, grinning, smile a second slice of moon. 

It knocked the breath out of Mike. Must have been obvious because Levi froze up, creases at the corner of his eyes. Even his dark eyes didn’t move, didn’t so much as close, when Mike leaned in and kissed him. His lips tasted sour sweet; Mike remembered the same taste on Erwin’s lips. Levi shivered against him and it spurred Mike to push him down onto the roof. They were quiet, just a skid of noise under the sky; Levi went down easy, held his smoking hand out of the fray.

Mike kissed Levi on the cheek, the nose, down his neck, kissing kissing kissing under his chin and jaw and over his ear, palm rubbing his hard stomach through his shirt, under the cloak, feeling the ridge of a hip bone. He kissed his way back to Levi’s sharp mouth, to his slack mouth that didn’t stir. And he didn’t stir. Didn’t move at all until Mike pushed up enough to get Levi’s placid face back in view; dark eyes and a red moue of lips. Levi brought his hand back, bringing the cigarette to his wet lips and inhaled, reached up with his other hand to brush Mike’s bangs out of his eyes. No; not placid; apologetic.

Twin plumes left his nostrils. “You’re not Erwin,” he murmured, cold fingers scraping back Mike’s hair. A rough palm cupped his cheek before it pushed lightly at Mike’s shoulder; he gave, sitting up and away, and Levi straightened up.

“I’m not,” Mike agreed ruefully, scrubbing a hand over his face, throat clicking with emotion. He dropped his hands into his lap, shoulders slumped, and chuckled. He ached. He envied. Nights were always theirs. The training yards sat empty below. "Guess I just wanted to make sure."

Levi made a noise, like he had something to say, but it took a long silence after that for anything to come: “Congratulations on lieutenant commander.” 

And then Levi shoved to his feet, ground out his cigarette, and offered Mike a hand up. So they left together, slipping in a window, searching the corridors only to find everyone in Erwin’s old office, desk commandeered by cards and drinks. A cheer went up when Levi threw open the door. Erwin looked up from his hand, bright eyes sliding over them, and Mike swore he saw Erwin’s shoulder relax, as if he couldn’t before without them with him.

Hanji through themself over the mess of cards in the center of the table. “Levi, Levi, let us finish this round without you cleaning us out.”

A prim eyebrow rose on the good captain’s face but no comment came otherwise. Levi slipped around everyone to a conspicuously empty stool on Erwin’s right, and Mike found its partner on Erwin’s left. 

“Mike, you need to catch up,” Milo demanded, sliding a large glass Mike’s way. And then a shot. He raised his own and everyone followed his lead, aside from Levi, who never drank. Erwin ribbed Mike to pick up the shot. 

“To Lieutenant Commander Zacharias!” he bellowed, laughing. Hanji, Milo, and Chana echoed. It was a quick burn in the back of his throat. 

“No Underground tricks tonight, Levi, please,” Erwin teased when they gave up the game and passed Levi the deck. Levi split it, and split it again, sliding cards with a fast shuffle, colored paper flashing between his hands. 

“Only because it’s your first night as Commander,” Levi sighed, shaking his head. There was a smile tucked in the corner of his mouth that only Erwin could stir up from the rubble of his hard heart. If they smiled at each other too long, no on there would tell.


End file.
